The infamous foot race / human spectacle, Bay to Breakers, held their 100th running last weekend and D and I made the trip out to San Francisco to participate in the silly first-hand. My college bud Al has posted photos from the event over the past few years, and between the centennial mark and our renewed interest in running, we knew this was this year to finally check it out. On the one hand, flying across the country for a 12k race (which, due to injuries, we didn’t even plan to run seriously) is pretty extravagant, but then again we were due for a jolt out of Ohio, and I can’t think of anything less like Ohio than B2B.
Bay to Breakers is unique from other races in so many ways. Its course covers 7.46 miles all mostly in a straight line as spans from the bay side of the city, all the way across town to the beach at the edge of the pacific. It takes you through a diverse slice of neighborhoods as well as a long trek through one of the nation’s most impressive city parks. About a third of the way into it there’s even a signature San Francisco hill that raises steeply over multiple blocks.
But the real magic, and mayhem, of B2B are the participants. While the race does draw some of the world’s best distance runners, the vast majority of the crowd are there to party across the city. This year the race registration was capped at 55,000 people – which they sold out – and most sources are estimating there was another 10-30k participating roguely. There are costumed runners and walkers of all sorts. Superheroes, cartoon and video game characters, people dressed as cops, people not dressed all (argh, my eyes!), and even inanimate objects (like a box of crayons or a barrel of monkeys).
Absent this year were floats, such as kegs in shopping carts and tequila bars pulled by go-karts, but there was still plenty of drinking along the route. Everyone is saying what a nice tame B2B it was, but it’s still a lightyear of crazy beyond anything you’d see in Cincinnati. Heck, the news from this year’s marathon in Cinci was a sole naked runner that got arrested. After he was tased. In the rain. At mostly walking pace we finished the trek in 2 hours and 32 minutes. It may be fun to go back and run the whole thing, but I wonder if I’d even want to blast through it that quickly. There’s far too much to experience in a quick hour run.
